Great both as a cultural portrayal of an upper class intelectual nucleus opposed to a hustler's one as an ingenious formal exercise of champ/contrechamp and later of patient focus, this must be one of the most humorous and perverse takes on desire, sexuality and objectification. A diptych that manages to remain gripping and keep gaining momentum during its first half while on its latter one is able to construct a claustrophobic but warm, wonderfully staged dialogue.

Russell's eye for composition and scenery is widely perceived, but I have absolutely no interest whatsoever on everything else he aims for here, neither narratively nor thematically. His wicked humour doesn't seem to blend well with his more discursive ambitions and there is an overall tonal irregularity that prevents this from being even mildly engaging in its critique of institutional religion and humanity's suppressed desires.

to institute representation as signifier, as a transcendental subject radically deluded, one can sense existence itself as a fundamental point, which can overbalance the entire structure it finds itself in. when ws turns the most crucial element of imbalance to pure abstraction, he shifts the very fabric of representation towards a tangible force, absolutely essential for the actual transformation to take place.

it takes this boisterous abstraction (alice as a representation of humanity, not humanity itself, alice as cinema) to…

beautiful visual textures that unveil an unhinged tale of blunder and gaucherie. north american sociopolitical imaginary in a very specific social stratum, cassavetian pacing allied with an explicitly frontal dramaturgy and an emotionally compelling dramatic cosmology. when misfits can’t find their place in society, when they don’t belong anywhere, when they are simply non-entities drifting around a room, thinking about their loved ones and all the suffering their actions may have caused to them and others.